"I have thought about this hacker news comment nearly every day since november ninth twenty seventeen"

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Reposted by Kevin M. Kruse
https://bsky.app/profile/kevinmkruse.bsky.social

Charles Barouch
‪@hdwp.com‬

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I have thought about this hacker news comment nearly every day since november ninth twenty seventeen

August 4, 2025 at 6:19 PM

— Charles Barouch (@hdwp.com) 2025-08-04T22:19:09.112Z

[C_U_L8R]

1. The rich kids just buy the successful kids

then parade around like they're some kind of fucking ninja jedi genius.

[Metaphorical]

2. Class Warfare

Yup. Most times, the rich kids really, really do not like for this to be called out, because it implies that they are not in fact exceptional in any way but being lucky enough to be born to the right parents. It's also why they are so f*cked up mentally as they get older - in all too many cases, fortunes are built by sociopaths who have absolutely no compunction about screwing others over if there's a profit in it for them, and when they pass those fortunes on to their kids, they also pass a huge amount of expectations that their kids will be even more ruthless than they were. You either run away from that pressure, or you become a narcissistic psychopath.

The danger that this class of sociopaths face is that the more obvious they are in their machinations, the more likely that people will have both the desire and ability to undercut their power base, and narcissists in particular have a great deal of difficulty remaining in the shadows. Trump's biggest problem is that he cannot stand being out of the limelight, and consequently tends to sabotage himself constantly. It's one of the reasons that most very wealthy people tend to keep VERY low profiles.

[usonian]

3. Old timers remember.

Gates pulled a basic program listing from a dumpster. Powerpoint was bought. Word and Excel were clones of other programs. VisiCalc comes to mind.

Musk bought Tesla. Microsoft bought every potential competitor. AT&T was a monopoly, was broken to bits and bought all the bits back.

The guy who invented the delay windshield wiper was ripped off, and also the guy who invented the pop out socket wrench.

[IbogaProject]

6. Gates Mom nudged a biz she had a board connection with to hire M$

Gates also bought what became Micro Basic and what became MS Dos and way over stripped what the original understanding was.

[eppur_se_muova]

4. And then get referred to as "self-made men" by a fawning press and public for the rest of their lives. nt

[OldBaldy1701E]

5. Well, the programming worked. (n/t)

[erronis]

7. Evocative post! For those that like to see the original source, please click on the link below

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15659076

Long thread starting with:

[rampartd]

8. building a computer in your dad's garage is considerably easier

if you have a dad, much less a garage.